From Nothing
by Rome Airi
Summary: Angsty England can't feel any emotion, but France stirs...something. From the point of view of England.
1. Chapter 1

Secretly tearing at the walls, screaming, clawing. Ripping at my hair, drawing blood from my skin, cutting deep, not to bleed, just to feel something. Anything. If pain is the only thing I can feel, well, then, I'll take it.

I'm just so sick of not feeling.

Can't you understand?

ALL I WANT IS TO FEEL AGAIN. Even if it hurts, burns, I want to feel it. If it suffocates and blinds, I want it all, because I'm sick of the endless nothing. It's been so long since I've felt anything, so long since I shut down my mind, soul, and body. So long since I've known something other than nothing.

What's the point of crying? How do you smile? Why do you hit things when you get mad? I used to know all these things, but now I just can't understand.

I just want to feel. I want to feel everything. A sliver of SOMETHING. I'll take anything.

I miss the pain and I miss the pleasure. I miss the heartache and the dizzying joy. I miss the envy, the contentment, the love, the hate, the anger, the joy, the sadness, the delight. There's not one thing I don't miss because now I don't have anything.

There's one person who stirs something of what I left to die inside. Just one, and just a stirring. I can't stand the teases; there's a tiny glimmer of some sort of warmth but by the time I've almost remembered what it is, he's gone, bouncing his soft blonde curls and laughing with that French accent. That stirs something too, but it's very different from the initial smidge of emotion. It's burning hot, and not in a good way, but I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT IT IS.

When he calls me "Angleterre" it invokes that same negative, burning hot stirring. When he claims himself to be so much more perfect and better than I, that inkling of feeling returns.

But when he smiles, the much more comfortable warmth comes back. When he speaks his native language. When he flounces about like a ridiculous rooster.

I like the warm one and I don't like the heated one. But I can't, I just can't remember what they ARE. Nor why the warm one hurts sometimes...but I still like it...a lot...

But I have a suspicion that, if the inkling could return, all of it could.

All I need is him. Francis.

******He****l********l****o, ********author here. Thanks for reading :)**

******I'm all for somewhat inconclusive endings like this, but if you want me to continue, do tell!**

******This was actually rather personal for me, as I used to be a sociopath that couldn't feel any sort of emotion and did that kind of stuff to just feel...anything. It's hard to explain/describe how it is. But I tried.**

******Thanks again for reading 3**


	2. Chapter 2

No one questioned the bandages securing the burns on my fingers and hands. That was for the best, as I wasn't sure how I would explain it to them anyway. They probably assumed I burned them getting scones from the oven, and I would go along with that story; I was positive they would try to stop my self-mutilation. I'm not self-hating or depressed. It's just that pain is all I really have anymore.

Pain and Francis. But Francis confuses me. Pain doesn't; it's solid, consistent.

World Meetings were not what I looked forward to. They never had been. It was much harder to sit through them now, though. Having read a lot, I know for a fact that sociopaths and psychopaths have a distinctive quality: lack of emotion. Well, technically psychopaths do in fact have emotions, but they're much more primitive; they don't feel things like guilt or grief, but they do feel more basic ones like anger. Regardless, the last thing I wanted was for them to get suspicious and start spying on me to make sure I didn't go on a killing spree or some nonsense. Because then they would see what I do to myself and take it away.

Alfred began babbling about superheroes saving the world, and I wondered how he ended up like that, seeing as I raised him. Obsessed with heroism. Does he even know what being a hero really means, what it entails? I doubted it.

A tiny voice from my amygdala* made itself heard. _Maybe if you'd been there to actually raise him, not just keep him hostage in your house..._

_ Shut up, amygdala._

Francis wasn't his normal self. That invoked more stirrings, but this was completely different from the first two that cropped up. This one felt sort of like I was sinking. Needless to say, it was unpleasant, but still, refreshing. Anything new was a relief.

Francs slid a folded piece of paper to me, and I set down my cup of tea to unfold it. As I expected, he had written me a little note. "You've been really weird lately. What's wrong, Angleterre?"

Oh God, why didn't I anticipate this? He was the person who'd known me the longest; practically forever, and I really didn't expect him to notice something was off? Instead I responded, "DON'T CALL ME THAT, GIT. Nothing's wrong."

He read it and gave me a look that screamed disbelief. I just raised an eyebrow and turned my attention back to the presentations. But as I lifted the teacup to my lips, Francis jostled my elbow and the tea spilled all over my shirt—very expensive shirt, I might add. Under which were some fairly fresh cuts that were not quite healed shut.

Carefully but quickly, I pulled the shirt away from my chest and growled, "Bloody wanker." I picked up my suitcase and ran off to the restroom. Luckily I had packed another shirt. Never know when you might need one.

There was no one else in the restroom, and I was fairly certain no one would be coming in, but I locked the door anyway. I took off the tea soaked shirt and had no idea what to do with it, as the tea stain would be permanent by now, just rolled it in some paper towels and stuffed it into my suitcase. Having done that, I stood in front of the mirror to examine my injuries. Some of the tea had seeped inside and induced some bleeding. I held a paper towel to it, hoping it wouldn't bleed for long so the others wouldn't get suspicious.

I was startled by the rattling sound of the doorknob. _You idjit, Arthur, you know you locked it. Stop freaking out._

Yet within a matter of seconds the door opened and I didn't have time to cover up.

I saw some long blonde hair, which I recognized to be Francis'. His eyes wide and eyebrows tilted upward. He only caught a glimpse before I found something to prevent his seeing me like this.

It was enough.

Those wide eyes stared at me, and that sinking feeling got deeper and deeper.

"Angleterre..."

*The amygdala is a small section of the brain, responsible mainly for controlling negative emotions.


	3. Chapter 3

"Angleterre..." He looked like he was in great pain. But how? He wasn't hurt.

"W-wait, it's not w-what you think, I-I-I can explain..." I said. "I, uh, recently was in a sword fight. With someone. He was better than me." He still looked hurt. "Hey, Francis, are you okay?"

"Do I look okay?" he asked a little forcefully, and I could hear the sobs he was trying to hold back.

"W-well, no, that's why I asked," I mumbled, knowing it wasn't the right thing to say but I had no clue what was right. "What's wrong..?"

He had sunk to his hands and knees on the floor, and the sight made that sinking feeling get deeper and darker and sharper, even if it was just his French dramaticism.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. "For how long has this been going on?"

Oh God... "I...can't remember," I admitted. "B-but please, you have to understand, I have to do this."

"What's wrong, Angleterre? What happened? Whatever it is, I-I can help!" he begged, letting out a rare stutter. The strong, confident Francis, stuttering.

"I-it's nothing!" I said, pulling on my shirt and quickly buttoning it up. It was too late, he had already seen, it couldn't do any harm now.

Moving quicker than I thought he could, he ripped my hands away and pulled the edges that weren't already buttoned together away, gently moving a hand across the length of the worst cut. Involuntarily, I winced at the stinging. "See, it's not nothing," he whispered. "It hurts you. So it hurts me."

"How does that work? We're not conjoined twins, we don't have a telepathic link-"

"Are you heartless?!" Francis yelled quietly. "Are you blind?!"

I blinked. It was safe to assume that Francis didn't mean this in a literal sense, but I didn't know how else to take it. I'm sure I knew once...but it just doesn't compute anymore. Emotion was often associated with the heart, I knew, so perhaps his first inquiry was related to that. "No, Francis," I said quietly, hoping it would encourage him to talk quietly too, "I can't feel anything, emotionally."

His hands gripped the edges of my shirt and he tilted his head down. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I stared down at his hands, they looked so soft, though I remembered a time when they were rough and scarred, and I felt myself sinking lower down. It would have been better if I was falling. Falling is quick, two blinks of an eye and you're down. Sinking is slow, drawing out everything, agonizing till you hit bottom. Then you drown.

"Why?" Francis repeated, tightening his hold on my shirt and then relaxing, though he still held on.

"Because..." This was the moment I've been dreading for as long as my ailment started. The moment where someone found out and I'd have to explain. But why, of all the others, why did it have to be Francis..? I didn't want him to see me like this. It was irrational, but I still didn't want it. "When I first realized it, you weren't there. And when you came back, it was too late."

"Was that when I didn't talk to you for two years?" he asked, tears lining his eyelashes.

I nodded.

Suddenly, I felt myself being engulfed by Francis' arms in a tight hug as he sobbed on my shoulder. "Je suis tellement désolé! Je ne quitterai jamais encore!" I asked him to translate in English, but he just cried harder and spoke more French, so I just patted his head. I've seen that done in films. Oddly enough, although the sinking feeling remained, the warm one that occurred sometimes around Francis bloomed at his actions, and made the sinking one much more bearable to the point of almost forgetting it was there. Almost.

He cried like that for half an hour, but it didn't feel that long. I actually...almost enjoyed it, in a weird way. Although I sort of wondered what the other nations thought was going on, I decided I didn't really care.

Francis' warmth left me, and the warmth inside wavered a tiny bit. "I'm...I'm really sorry, Angleterre...it's all my fault...I shouldn't have left...I-I'll never leave again..." he said, but he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"It's not your fault."

He lifted his head, and I saw why he wouldn't meet my eyes before. His were grey from crying and held so much pain... "No, it's all my fault...But I'm going to fix this, fix you. I promise."


	4. Chapter 4

After that meeting, the rest of which was filled with awkward glances (I could only imagine what they thought of Francis and I being in the privacy of the restroom for so long), Francis went home with me. I don't know what he hoped to accomplish.

In any case, I was famished, so I went to the kitchen and started getting things out for scones. Francis noticed and took everything out of my hands, which earned him a confused look from me. He grinned sheepishly and said, "Ah, I just thought we could make them together, Angleterre."

"Why?" I asked, knowing he criticized and hated my cooking.

"Because I want to know how you make them."

It seemed a really bad excuse, but I let him assist anyway. Watching him cook was pretty much like watching a god make a world; everything he did seemed effortless and it was almost like magic guided his hands and led him to create such perfection.

This time, the scones weren't burned. Honestly, they tasted a million times better than anything I've ever made. And they had blueberries. My favorite. "I like them better when you make them," I admitted.

"Me too," he said shamelessly. That brought up a little bit of that burning hot feeling, the unpleasant one. It was almost like he knew, because he asked, "Did that make you angry?"

Anger. It was a sliver of anger after all, wasn't it? But not quite full-fledged _anger_, or even a diluted form. Just hazed over like a window on a foggy evening. I explained it to him.

"Do you think, if I did things to make you angry all the time, you would eventually get truly angry?" he asked.

"I suppose," I replied with a small sigh. "But don't start with anger. If that's the only one it works for, I'll just be angry all the time."

"Yeah, that was bad enough before you lost all emotion," he mumbled, but I could hear him and my anger was just a little bit stronger this time. Not much, but enough to notice. "So what shall I start with?"

"Something pleasant," I said, reaching for my tea. "Happiness, maybe."

He look daunted. "How?! I've never been able to make you happy!"

I sent him a disbelieving glance. "Have you ever tried?"

"Well, no," he said, to which I responded with a knowing look. "So, what does make you happy?" he asked.

This induced a diluted anger. It felt different, even though it was hazed over like everything else. "Well, I don't know, do I? I can't feel anything, remember?"

"Did the scones make you happy?"

Come to think of it, when he made the scones, there was a warmth. It was much less in-depth than the warmth Francis usually gave me, but it was still there; a dusting on the surface of my soul like flower pollen. "I guess so, yeah."

He hummed, then stood and walked to the kitchen. I could hear him searching around, so I asked him rather loudly what he was doing.

"Looking for wine," he said. "If I'm going to be here for a while, I'm going to want wine."

Anger. Just a twinge, but still there. "You're terrible at not making me angry."

He made a sound that was usually prelude to an argument, but he cut it short. Under normal circumstances, he'd never pass up the opportunity for a fight. Granted, these weren't normal circumstances, but it still felt like he was babying me. I didn't know how to interpret that; was he doing it for himself like he usually did or was it out of consideration for me?

He walked back looking discouraged and somewhat awkward. "There's no wine," he mumbled.

"Of course not, I drink tea." I bit into another scone. "If you want wine, get it yourself."

"Non, I'll be fine." He sat down in his chair again, examining his fingernails. "So, Angleterre, you like to read. What's your favorite book?"

"That's hard. All the great classics."

"That gives me nowhere to start. Choose one."

"Nowhere to start? How do you mean?" Was he actually going to try reading? Another dusting of warmth.

He confirmed my suspicions. "I'm going to read your favorites, mon ami."

"Um, well. I like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories on Sherlock Holmes. That should give you a good starting place." A bit easier to read than Shakespeare. I walked over to a bookshelf in the far corner of the room, where I kept all the volumes, and showed him where they were. "Read them in order of the publication date, that goes left to right."

I could see he looked somewhat daunted by the number of books, but he covered it up with his French laugh and got the first one off the shelf, then sat back down and opened to the first page, a determined look in his eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

A few hours of silence. That was all Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" provided.

"That actually was pretty good," Francis said, looking exhausted. "I can see why you read it."

"And I can see you're lying," I replied, barely glancing at him as I put my kettle on the stove to boil. He looked fatigued. No one looks fatigued after completing something they enjoy. Except—er, well, no looks looks tired after reading a good book, usually.

"No, I really did like it!" he insisted. "I'm just a little tired because I'm not used to reading."

"Uh-huh. Right." I shuffled through my rather extensive selection of teas, deciding to do something a little different and have country peach tea. I placed a tea bag into the delicate cup and extracted a small spoon from the silverware drawer.

"Honest!" he said. "I never would've suspected the carriage-driver." He looked at the cover. "Although I did find his description of Mormons offensive."

"Why, are you a Mormon now?" I asked. Where was the sugar jar? Oh damn, all out. I opened a cupboard and reached for more sugar; why did it have to be on the top shelf? I'm such an idjit. "Do you secretly have a slew of wives? Actually, don't answer that. I don't want to know."

He touched my side gently, and I stopped to glare at him. As he smiled softly, not his usual scary one but a warm, comfortable one, he nudged me to the side. Before I could protest, he was reaching up and getting the sugar I was too short to reach. God, he's so tall...

The sugar was handed to me, and I didn't respond for a second. Warmth. Not just "happy," though, it was the first in-depth one that filled a void inside even if I wasn't sure what it was. "This was what you wanted, right? And non, I don't have a 'slew of wives,' as you put so eloquently."

He ran his fingers through my hair, and I smacked his hand away and didn't respond. Instead, I filled my small sugar jar and managed to put the bigger sugar container back on its shelf without the assistance of Francis. I could hear him laugh at my efforts.

"What kind of tea are you having?" he asked, then took the box which I had left helpless on the kitchen counter. "Country peach?" he read, and I must admit, his accent shaped the words beautifully.

"Yeah. You want a cup?"

"Sure." He walked away with my book, then came back without. "I'm going to take a break from reading for a while."

"Okay." I leaned against the counter, watching the kettle, waiting for it to boil. He took a place very close next to me. Very close. Involuntarily, I moved away just a tiny bit—I'm not used to contact.

"So, what do you do in your spare time?" I asked to cover up the awkward silence. Awkward because he just sort of openly stared at me. Also awkward because I realized that, although I've spent my entire life with him, I didn't know what he did when we weren't fighting. Was I really that self-centered, that detached?

"Drink wine. Seduce people. Hang out with Gilbert and Antonio." A shrug. "Not much."

"Right." So basically what he did _not_ in his spare time.

"What about you? You can't possibly read all the time. Your eyes would bleed."

I looked down to the floor and closed my eyes. "Reading takes up most of my time. But I also practice lots of witchcraft. I'm a well known wizard in some circles."

There was a wave of mild, watered-down anger as he laughed at me. But then he said something I never expected of him or anyone, really. "Could you teach me some witchcraft?"

Warmth. Dusting and depth. "Y-you really want to?"

A smile. "Sure, why not? It can't be that bad."

I smiled back. It felt weird, because I hadn't done it in so very long. But it also felt...natural. Like faces were meant to smile. Yes, this was happiness, joy, delight, I remembered that much now. There was something else too though. I couldn't place it. It was a lot like happiness...but not quite.


	6. Chapter 6

Despite my current perceptively severed state, I could tell that, although Francis tried covering it up, he was certainly frustrated. It's not like you can expect to just chant gibberish over an artistic pentacle and hope what you want will pop up. There's certain elements and rituals.

"Why would the color of the candles even matter to the purpose of the spell?" he asked, squinting at the small text in the book he was attempting to consult from.

"It strengthens the potency of the spell," I explained, already exasperated from this day's antics, which so far proved fruitless. "It's the inner spirituality in a physical form. Like, purple works best for spells involving creativity or spirituality, while blue is better suited to healing and communication."

A flash of what I remembered Francis' anger to look like passed quickly, as he took a deep breath and said as calmly as he could, "I can't claim to completely understanding why you're into this."

"I don't see why you drink wine as much as you do, but I can't claim to never having enjoyed it," I said, trying to establish some sort of non-offensive connection and encourage him to try harder. "The first bit is the hardest. It's a lot to memorize. Take your time."

"It's incredibly boring," Francis said, losing all insight as to who he was talking to. A tiny flame of anger flared up in my chest, watered-down as Italian tea. Rather than say something about it, I chose to open a book, trying to look full of purpose, and flipped through the pages.

My attention was brought back to Francis as, even though I wasn't looking directly at him, I could see a tiny glare that indicated a very bad idea had presented itself to him in the guise of a good idea. I braced myself for the coming horror.

"Maybe wine will help with your emotion problem," he said, a glint in his eye which caused small boys and sometimes grown men to run away, quick as they pleased.

"Are you suggesting I get drunk?" I asked. "With you? Do I look like the most keen potential rape victim?"

"It's not rape if you like it," he said with a terrifying grin that rivaled his eye glint. This warranted a good beating, but as I was too far away, I threw a book—of an impressive weight, might I add—in the direction of his head. He dodged it by a centimeter or two...damn agile bastard.

"Besides, I thought you hated me when I got drunk," I said. It was very true that anyone that had been around me while I was in an ungentlemanly drunk state of mind had agreed that it was something that should be against the laws of the universe.

I still have yet to figure out if I'm Protestant or Catholic.

"Well, if all else fails, I can always roofie you," Francis reasoned, and I had to agree that it would be an effective termination to my drunk ramblings, if somewhat undesirable.

Wait a minute. "Why the bloody hell are you in possession of roofies, frog?!" The nickname I had given him so long ago slipped out so naturally, yet I couldn't remember the last time I'd called him that. Maybe it could be chalked up to some sort of improvement..?

Unlike his previous smile, this one was warm and old, but old in a good way, like a nostalgic picture that brings back rushes of joy-filled memories. Happy, but a little sad, too. "You haven't called me that in a very long time," he whispered, confirming my silent assumptions.

Nostalgic smiles are not generally everyday occurrences, so I had to guess that this was a "tender" moment, although somewhere deep down, I suppose I already sensed it. Knowing was only part of the recovery, though. The next part would be even more difficult; responding appropriately.

I just didn't know how. I had depended on knowing before; if I can't have proper emotions, I may as well have knowledge, correct? In a way, I retained that dependance, and it was frustrating to have nothing left to lean on, like being on the very edge of a cliff blindfolded. Fall one way, you'll land on solid ground, and be safe. Fall the other way, you lapse ever downward till you're just a blood stain at the base.

So, I tried copying his smile. It was a small smile, but I supposed it was better than staring blankly. He seemed to think so too as he gestured towards the kitchen. "I could go for some wine. What about you?"


End file.
